A word of advice to anyone doing some holiday e-shopping: do not order drugs online and have them sent to your college mailbox. You will get busted, stripped of your titles (assuming you have any), and possibly expelled.

Such is the pending fate of Delos Chang, a Dartmouth freshman who was caught receiving a shipment of illegal substances roughly two weeks ago. The Hanover Police Department has since confirmed Chang’s involvement, according to an IvyGate source.

It’s not clear whether Chang mailed the drugs to himself, bought them online from some freaky crackhead version of Amazon, or merely had a generous pen pal from the Netherlands–but rumor has it that the drugs included cocaine, ecstasy, and LSD. (Really? LSD again? And here we thought it was only good for the occasional Albanian trance concert or planetarium visit. Who knew everyone in the Ivy League liked to sit around for hours hearing colors and watching the walls breathe.)

Chang is, or at least was, the elected secretary of the 2014 Class Council–not to mention a staff writer for The Dartmouth. Sebastian DeLuca, the 2014 class president, said in an email that Chang would be relieved of his position and replaced with an existing member of the class council. Chang, meanwhile, took down his Facebook page sometime between yesterday and today, and didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The most beautiful irony of all might be Chang’s most recent contribution to The Dartmouth, an opinion piece he penned just over a month ago called “How to Ruin Your Social Life at Dartmouth.” His list consists of (1) harassing people on the toilet, (2) harassing people with threats of mortal psychosis, and (3) harassing people using emoticons. Let us add (4) LSD. Contrary to popular belief, it really only makes you popular with the police.

The administration has been very hush-hush about the case for the last two weeks, but Delos Chang has been an ongoing source of muttering on the website BoredatBaker.com. The Dartmouth, which technically ceased publication two weeks ago, is grinding back into gear for a breaking news story on Delos, according to a reporter for the paper. Updates to come on that. For now, consider this a warning to send all your drugs by FedEx.

Update: an IvyGate source who’s requested anonymity has informed us that cocaine was definitely not involved. And then there were two.

Also, there appears to be confusion at The Dartmouth as to whether Chang is actually secretary or treasurer of his class council. Their most recent story says treasurer, but this article says secretary, and so does the Facebook page created for Chang’s election. Apparently drug use is not uncommon at campus newspapers either.

According to our tipster and Brown’s Blog Daily Herald, NOTHING, not even the stupidest way to get frostbite rational practice of streaking, is safe this finals season.

The Blog Daily Herald reported,

We at BlogDailyHerald are hearing reports that this semester’s traditional Naked Donut Run involved a few too many clothing items. According to our intelligence, after successful (read: naked) Naked Runs at the CIT and the Rock, NDR-ers were stopped by SciLi security and told they had to put on clothes, or face punishment.

Brown is truly crushed about this. When checking Brown’s Wikipedia page on traditions for information about this treasured tradition, IvyGate found this:

At the end of each semester, towards the end of the Reading Period that precedes exams, various student groups walk naked through student libraries such as the Rock, the SciLi, and the CIT and offer donuts to students who are studying. However, at the end of the Fall 2010 semester, Brown Department of Public Safety officers threatened to arrest students involved in the Naked Donut Run on charges of public indecency, forcing the participants to remain clothed at the SciLi.

They’ve already updated the Wiki?! Wow – I guess letting prospies, since they’re the only ones who will read every single Wikipedia page for  each Ivy, know that about this new occurrence is the most important thing the world ever, aside from passing exams.

What will be the fate of this “storied Brown tradition?” Semi-clothed donut run just doesn’t have the same ring to it.  How can Brown survive without the triumvirate of nudity that the fall Naked Party and the SexPowerGod party help complete?

I admit that I don’t know how public nudity really works in Brown’s or Yale’s or Harvard’s or Dartmouth’s or any other school’s culture. I also acknowledge that Columbia students, despite the recent attention, truly aren’t that interesting and could be considered prudes. But seriously it’s WINTER - which forces you to wear more and not less clothing. I think we should all be somewhat content with simply having primal screams as the typical Ivy finals “tradition.” Ok, I admit it’s somewhat lame, but seriously hearing someone scream to the world –“I have five papers to write; I’m going to die!!!!!”— can help make you feel slightly better about your life. On another note,  you can’t beat this snowpocalypse finals phenomenon.

Every year, 14 dudes dress up in butler suits and sing for the fine men and women of Yale. Sometimes they even deign to croon for the lowly plebian masses. They call themselves the Whiffenpoofs. And, for some reason, they seem shocked when people make fun of them.

Over the past couple of weeks, the Whiffenpoofs appeared on the nationally televised Sing-Off competition on NBC. They appeared in their coat-tailed tuxes. They wore white gloves. They sang Michael Bublé. Along the way they got teased, then eliminated. (Maybe it had something to do with singing Michael Bublé?)

What they took away from the experience was that people just wanted to fixate on the Ivy League thing.

The Whiffenpoofs were invited on the show without auditioning. I think they felt confident about our ability to be on the show because the quality of Whiff groups tends to be at least decent, and because even if we were bad, we would have still had the image they were going for. As you can image, the “feel” of an Ivy League group in coattails was a lot of what they were going for, and I think that came across really strongly in the first episode’s intro.

(UPDATE: Quote per Whiffenpoofs business manager Daniel Turcza)

Sure, sure. Of course the media is going to make a big stink out of anything involving Ivy League affiliations. (Just ask Columbia.) But the Whiffenpoofs basically poured gasoline all over that fire – and in a way so as to make themselves as unlikeable as possible – during their introductory video on the Sing-Off’s season premiere.

First, musical director Stefan Weijola claimed that the Whiffenpoofs invented a cappella, which is both false and just incredibly snooty. Then, for anyone who didn’t already think the ‘Poofs got their jollies from playing out Victorian cosplay fantasies, first tenor Brennan Caldwell said this:

My favorite thing in the world is to dress up in my tux. I feel so inordinately powerful.

Humility fail.

The rest of the time, anyone who spoke was basically just repeating the same self-fellating manifesto: “Everyone is expected to be good. But people expect the Whiffenpoofs to be super fucking awesome – like, curing-cancer-and-transfiguring-gold-from-lumps-of-cheese-whizz-whilst-singing-Cole-Porter levels of awesome. Cuz, you know, YAAAALE.”

After the jump: The Whiffenpoofs perform, everyone makes fun of them

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Earlier we nonchalantly joked that spilling a bottle of pee on some LGBT library books in a Harvard library could be, you know, a totally innocent mistake. So get this: we were kinda right. (It feels weird.)

According to the Crimson,

it was revealed Monday morning that “our own library personnel” had accidentally spilled a bottle, containing what was reported to be urine, that had been found on the shelf, according to [College Dean Evelyn] Hammonds.

Okay, library staffers are already kind of creepy and lurking. This is not helping their image. But apparently it’s enough to downgrade the HUPD’s classification of the act from “hate crime” to “prank or something like it.” The employee who spilled the urine evidently reported it and cleaned it up the day it happened.

LGBT student representatives at Harvard are still distressed about the whole business, as LGBT student representatives often are about things that involve urine and are non-consensual. Emma Wang, a junior and co-head of Queer Students and Allies, was certainly not pleased:

“I don’t think this issue was handled with the degree of sensitivity and care it could have been,” Wang said, noting that while the incident is no longer being characterized as a hate crime, it still had an impact on the LGBT community. “It is the College’s responsibility to treat everyone in the community as an equal and to shoulder equal responsibility for incidents that affect that community.”

It’s not totally clear how everyone in the community should shoulder equal responsibility for the bottle of evil biblio-pee, but let’s move on.

On, that is, to the mystery of the urine in the library. Why was there a bottle of urine sitting pretty next to a stack of books on gay rights? What, for the love of all that is stuffy and motheaten in Lamont library, was going on in that aisle during the long, dark days before Thanksgiving break?

You know, we probably don’t want to guess about that one. Especially considering that we’re now 1 for 1 on the subject of Harvard’s pee-related incidents, and we’d hate to be right again.

Harvard’s reputation for classiness is certainly one for the ages. Their latest act of noble grace: some Cantab has gone rogue and started peeing on library books about gay marriage. The Crimson reports that roughly 40 books on LGBT issues were “vandalized with urine” just before Thanksgiving break, according to a report filed last Friday with the Harvard University Police Department. The books, which were worth a few thousand dollars in total, have been thrown out for obvious reasons.

To be fair, human anatomy may not have been directly involved here. Library staff members apparently found an empty bottle next to the books, which they think may have been a vessel for the bespoke urine. Considering that we know plenty of frat boys who will unzip right into the closest item with space available (beer can/egg cup/friend’s backpack), it’s possible that a drunk doofus just got stuck in Lamont library, couldn’t find the bathroom, peed where pee would fit, and then got clumsy.

Hey, we said possible, not likely. Other things are possible too, like the plot of Cloverfield and Brown students being productive. At any rate, the HUPD is wisely assuming that this is the work of a prejudiced douchebag, and is treating its investigation as such.

Moral of the story is–and we shouldn’t even have to say this–don’t pee on books about gay people. Don’t pee on books at all. Don’t even pee into a bottle and then pour the contents of the bottle on books. Pee in the freaking toilet. And then flush.

Finals are bleak times.

However, according to our tipster, James Franco and friends are helping us all get through it – “James Franco is having FUN all over Yale.”

If sending pictures of your classmates asleep in the library is not enough to help hone your procrastination and paparazzi skills, you can now send pictures of how you envision James Franco enjoying life to this tumblr site. Although fair warning, the video about James Franco hypothetically making out with himself makes us wonder where the line between creative fun and rampant obsession lies. When we see an Echo-and-Narcissus-inspired Francophile picture complete with lake and all, we’ll know that things have gone too far.

However, just marvel at the accuracy of these pictures. The first picture is a picture of the actual James Franco studying in Butler at Columbia, and well the one on the bottom is someone’s wet dream of seeing him study.

Our two favorite pictures are available after the jump. (We would have added more, but the tumblr site has a tendency to freeze/get slow when copying pictures…sigh, after the enthusiasm of these people, one would think that Franco cutouts would have the magical ability to fix all)

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Duck and cover, folks: early decision letters are dropping like bombs this week over the homes of high schoolers. Or at least, they are for the Ivy League schools that haven’t abolished ED in the name of making their applicants salivate especially hard fairness. Penn, which released its decisions last Friday, is already reporting a drop in admit rates from 31 to 26 percent. High school students must be getting desperate.

But no one’s as desperate as the two girls responsible for the blog Harvard, Please. We’ll leave their names out of it, but they’re as rabid about getting into Harvard as most teenage girls are about Justin Bieber’s hair. They’ve also discovered Tumblr, which honestly seems to exist solely to channel the manic panics of hormonal teenyboppers. The upshot is a cultlike stream of love letters, Dear Santas, and Mariah Carey reduxes–all of them glorifying the Harvard Quidditch team and the shoe of the John Harvard statue that everybody pees on.

There are really no words to describe it, but we’ll do our best. A few frightening details after the jump.

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Last spring, Princeton announced that it was planning to host a reality TV show featuring ten undergrads. Somehow we missed that horrifying news item at the time–but luckily for us all, there’s still time to make fun of it! According to the Princetonian, this monstrosity is still happening, and if all goes well (read: if nothing goes well), the show’s creators will have a pilot ready by February.

The administration is still dragging its feet, perhaps because it fears the inevitable influx of Bumpit-wearing Slutty Susans from the rest of New Jersey, hoping to win their breasts a bit of camera time. Or maybe because it fears that not even the Slutty Susans can distract from the fact that Ivy Leaguers are pasty, pompous, lonely jackasses who wear a lot of wool and are generally kind of lame.

The makers of the show know that, obviously, which explains why they’re so keen to focus on Princeton itself, rather than its inhabitants. Behold Rosana Clawson, one of the project’s co-directors:

“The University is just so amazing, and the students are just so fabulous, and I want to portray that,” Clawson said. Rather than centering the show around individual students’ personalities, she explained that “Princeton is the main character.”

On the surface, it looks like Ms. Clawson has been binging on Ivy League Kool-Aid and giant doobies. But if we know reality TV people–and we like to think we do, despite the fact that we don’t actually know any of them–this cannot end well for Princeton. We have a sneaking feeling that the Princeton docudream is going to turn out like the deformed crack baby of The Apprentice and NYC Prep. And this statement does nothing to allay our fears:

“We generally look for synergies with the project,” Aronson said. Movies like “A Cinderella Story” and “Spanglish” feature female characters applying to Princeton and coincide with the University’s interest in increasing the number of applications from young women, she added.

“This is not going to be ‘Jersey Shore’ at Princeton,” Clawson said. “This is the academics, the elite, a very high, high taste. It’s just going to be elegant.”

We can’t wait to see what “elegant” reality television looks like. The last time a reality show demonstrated such “high, high taste,” the Whiffenpoofs were making fools of themselves on The Sing-Off. Oh wait. That was four days ago.

With a media clusterfuck, finals, and frigid temperatures, Columbia and probably the rest of the Ivy League is in great need of comfy sweaters and holiday cheer.  On Harvard Time, who is no stranger to media attention, just released a video that gives us just that,  along with a computer generated fireplace.

Thanks to all our tipsters who sent this in!

Holy smoke. Shit just got heavy at Columbia.

David Epstein, a 46-year-old political science professor at Columbia, was arrested and charged with incest on Wednesday morning. Epstein had a three-year-long sexual relationship with his daughter, now 24, which began in 2006 and was reportedly consensual. He has since been released on recognizance, which means that someone should go make sure he hasn’t already left for Canada.

The Spec reports that as of last week, Epstein was teaching two classes on campus: a lecture called “Scope and Methods,” and a class called “Research Topics and Game Theory.” As of right now, though, Epstein’s on administrative leave. Maybe his students won’t have to take their finals. (Hey, there’s a silver lining to everything, right? Wrong.)

Two days ago, Epstein was also (at least functionally) married to a fellow Columbia poli sci professor, Sharyn O’Halloran. The Spec checked his Facebook page–wise newshounds!–and have since determined that the pair is no longer married online. Or, presumably, in real life.

The accused made an appearance in court today, but no trial date has been set yet. Epstein currently faces a single felony count, but if convicted he could face up to four years in prison.

The story has already been picked up by several mainstream news organizations, including Gothamist and the New York Daily News. An Oprah special and a Lifetime movie are undoubtedly also in the works as we speak. That might be the most frightening thing about all this, if you discount the fact that the man spent three years having illegal freaky sex with his young daughter while simultaneously teaching classes full of girls young enough to be his daughter.

By the way, he also taught at Harvard. Make what you will of that.

IvyGate might have to start rationing its Columbia jokes soon. Not just because we’re running low after Tuesday’s drug bust scandal, but also because…well, things up there are getting seriously disturbing, and we want to make sure we have enough when the ground cracks open and swallows Columbia whole.